Their Daughter
by 24Chocoholic24
Summary: The missing person report went cold and the PI told Chase there was nothing more she could do for him. Cuddy was convinced that Allison was no longer alive. It was all Chase could do to hope that she was wrong. Chameron; and I only own Grace R&R :


08/11-12/09

**Their Daughter**

_AU; everything up to Cameron resigning is valid in this story…_

Chase had just wrapped up a routine tubal ligation, his last assignment of the day. He sent one of his team members to report to the family, then exited the OR with a sigh of relief. Time to go home and sleep, the only respite he had been able to find for seventeen and a half years. That, and the ray of hope that the woman he loved might still be alive, kept him going, and kept him at Princeton-Plainsboro. House had admitted himself to the Mayfield Mental Hospital a few years after Allison Cameron disappeared, and Foreman took his place in the hospital. That winter, the missing person report went cold and the PI told Chase there was nothing more she could do for him. Cuddy was convinced that Allison was no longer alive. It was all Chase could do to hope that she was wrong. Over time, the pain had subsided, but the dull throbbing of the heartache was his constant companion. He learned to live with it, to move on and focus on simply moving forward and doing his job well. Still, he thought about her every day: her smile, her laugh, her passion for doing the right thing. She had left his life so suddenly, taking with her his lust for life. He could not be truly happy without her.

Now he headed for the locker room, thinking about anything that would take his mind off of her. It did not help that the teenage girl sitting on the bench outside the OR looked just like her. She had Allison's eyes, her lips… even her nose. Oh, crud. He was starting to see her in total strangers. He blinked several times to clear his head, then began to walk away, realizing that he had stopped to stare at her. He stopped, though, when the girl stood and called after him. "Doctor Chase?" He stopped and turned around. "Yes?"

"Hi, I'm Grace."

That was Allison's favorite name for a girl. The heartache intensified as he remembered the night that she told him that. He pushed it out of his mind as best he could for the moment. "Can I help you?"

"I hope so." She had that look on her face… a hint of Allison's despair mixed in with hers.

He had to get some sleep before his subconscious totally took over. "Well, my shift just ended, but maybe –"

"Great!" Chase just stared at her, tired and distraught, so she went on. "I… need to talk to you."

Chase shrugged. "Sure."

"Did you used to work for a Doctor House?"

"Yes, I worked – with Doctors Cameron and Foreman – in a fellowship under Doctor House until about sixteen years ago. That was probably before you were born."

"No; I'll be eighteen in a month."

Eighteen years and eight months ago… that was the last time he had… been… with Allison. "What can I do for you?"

"My mother… when she was giving birth to me, her heart stopped. They did an emergency C-section, and they got her heart going again, but her brain was without oxygen for a full minute. She lost most of her memory. She couldn't remember names of people or places… identities… she could only remember how to do things. Gradually, things started coming back to her, but never the people of her past. She remembers feelings about them, but only in the last few months has she been able to even remember appearances. The thing is, she was still in love with my father when she had me. She never lost that love, but she lost all memory of who it _was_ that she loved. Over the years, she's gained back bits and pieces of her memory, in a slow trickle. Last month, that trickle reminded her of your appearance. Now, she knows she's in love with an Aussie. I started going through her known affiliations on the internet, and I stumbled across your profile. The people she remembers working with… you, Doctor Foreman, and Doctor House fit her memories."

"Who are you?" He wanted to believe her, to believe that Allison might be alive, that he might see her again, but he had to be absolutely sure.

"I am the reason you haven't seen the woman you love in almost two decades. Who do you see in me? I've got my mother's face, but apparently, my father's hair." Chase was silent, still in shock and desperate to believe. It was time to seal the deal. "And I know my father isn't the guy in the wedding picture in her purse. That one died of thyroid cancer that metastasized to his brain six months after they got married."

"What's your last name?" His voice was shaky, almost a whisper, and his gaze was full of desperate hope.

"Cameron. Grace Cameron."

"Your mother is Allison Cameron?"

Grace smiled and pulled a picture of her mother and her out of her purse. She handed it to Chase, who suddenly found himself short of breath. "She's… alive."

"Yeah… she's really missed her 'Wombat-Boy.'"

"Where is she?" Chase asked from his seat on the bench nearby.

"We've been living in Massachusetts, but I came here for camp, so…" she checked her watch, "she should be arriving at the community center in about five minutes to pick me up."

"She's here?"

"Not _here_ here, but relatively… here… yes. And I really need to get back to the center before she finds out I'm here here and not _there_ here. I need to go."

"I'll take you." Chase stood and began to collect his things.

"Grace!!" Grace turned and stiffened a bit at the sight of her mother breezing down the hallway toward her. She shot a glance over to Chase, who dropped what he was doing and straightened his back, a look of hopeful anticipation written in his features. Grace's mother was barely six feet away from her daughter when she spotted Chase. She stopped dead in her tracks, her expression of exasperation fading into one of astonished recognition. She gasped, then let out a shaky breath before blinking several times. Her eyes shone as she broke into a grin and began to laugh breathlessly. "Chase!!"

"Allie!" Chase grinned for the first time in almost eighteen years as he welcomed the woman he loved back into his arms. He hugged her tightly to him, a bit afraid to let go lest he lose her again, and she began to cry.

"Oh!" she gasped between sobs, "Oh, G**!! Oh, my G**, I remember!!" She pulled back and looked him in the eyes, and it was like nothing had ever changed between them since that fateful night all those years ago.

"Apparently." Chase could not help but chuckle a little in delight.

"No," Allison replied fervently, "You don't understand! I haven't been able to remember much of anything since… almost since I left! You see I –"

"Coded when you were giving birth to Grace..." Allison's face fell a little. "Our daughter."

"She told you," Allison concluded with a deep breath, glancing over at Grace, who had stricken up a conversation with one of Chase's teammates.

Chase nodded, then cocked his head, bringing Allison's attention back to him. "But I still have one question. Why did it take seventeen years for you to come back?"

"I didn't know where 'back' _was!!_" She was slightly offended that he would suspect her of being unfaithful.

"You really had no idea where you came from, who you were, or who might know?" His hands dropped from her shoulders as his frown grew more doubtful.

"No! I didn't! I left the hospital with my newborn baby, only to find my apartment burned to the ground. I lost everything… my address book, cell phone, every paper in my possession, passwords, photos, my computer and almost everything on it… I had _nothing_ to go on." Allison was sure that her face was red, but at least Chase seemed to be on her side now, and gaining. "I tried to work with the government, but they wouldn't help me. I hadn't got a job yet, and I didn't have what I needed to get a respectable one; so I had just enough money to keep the two of us going until I had done enough odd jobs to put her in a nursery and get a real job. I worked at a department store for 12 years, then I managed to get a secretarial job at Grace's school, where I am now."

"Oh," was all Chase could say to this, riddled with regret for doubting her intentions.

"Yeah," she replied thoughtfully. "You think I wouldn't have come back seventeen years ago if I could have remembered who and where to come back to?" Her eyes were pleading with his heart.

"I'm sorry. I'm sure you would have… although, somehow, I doubt you would have brought Grace. You ran away because you found out you were pregnant, didn't you?"

She wanted to deny it, to lie and make him feel better, but she knew it would be a lost cause this time. For a moment, she looked down at the ground, pulling together an explanation he could understand. Then, she brought her eyes back up to meet his waiting gaze. "I didn't want you to know. I was afraid it would scare you away… or that you wouldn't believe she was yours. I decided I didn't want to know what you would think, so I… ran. I'm sorry."

"I love you," Chase assured her. A certain light returned to Allison's face. "There's… nothing… you can do to change that; you know that, right?" She nodded, her lips turning up into a guilty smile. "And I love that we have a daughter. In fact, I wish you would've taken a chance and told me when you found out. Then, I wouldn't've had to wait so long to do.. this!" Chase smiled, bending down on one knee, and pulled out of his pocket the velvet box he kept on his person every day. He opened it towards her, and grinned, yet again, when she began to laugh and cry all at once. Grace turned around just in time to hear him say six words he had been holding in since before she was born: "Allison Cameron, will you marry me?" The "yes" was out of the woman's mouth almost before he finished asking, and she was in his arms again by the time he stood up.

Grace just smiled, at least until her parents turned their combined attention to her. Her mother shook her head. "Grace Cameron, under any other circumstances you would be grounded; I hope you realize that."

"Yes, Mum."

Allison smiled. "Thank you for… finding your father."

"Sure thing," Grace shrugged.

"All right," Chase clapped once, heading back to the bench to recollect his things, "C'mon, kiddo! Let's go get your luggage, then I'll take you and your lovely Mum out to dinner."

"Y'know," Allison smiled as the three headed out the door together, "I seem to remember a cozy diner just around the corner from here…"


End file.
